The Practice of Programming

Book Description

With the same insight and authority that made their book The
Unix Programming Environment a classic, Brian Kernighan
and Rob Pike have written The Practice of
Programming to help make individual programmers more
effective and productive.

The practice of programming is more than just writing code.
Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design
alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain
software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they
must be concerned with issues like compatibility, robustness, and
reliability, while meeting specifications.

The Practice of Programming covers all these
topics, and more. This book is full of practical advice and
real-world examples in C, C++, Java, and a variety of
special-purpose languages. It includes chapters on:

debugging: finding bugs quickly and methodically

testing: guaranteeing that software works correctly and
reliably

performance: making programs faster and more compact

portability: ensuring that programs run everywhere without
change

design: balancing goals and constraints to decide which
algorithms and data structures are best

interfaces: using abstraction and information hiding to control
the interactions between components

style: writing code that works well and is a pleasure to
read

notation: choosing languages and tools that let the machine do
more of the work

Kernighan and Pike have distilled years of experience writing
programs, teaching, and working with other programmers to create
this book. Anyone who writes software will profit from the
principles and guidance in The Practice of
Programming.